[Jnadke]

My scariest moment ever was actually last summer. We were demonstrating the 2002 robot for the Flag Day Parade. Our team used a tractor-trailer (semi-trailer) that was about 5-6 feet tall. We modified it with safety railing made out of PVC. Well nobody every realized it, but the safety railing was taller than the robot...

Come parade time, we're cruising down the parade route. Suddenly the robot controller starts spazing out as the robot is coasting toward the side of the trailer. I quickly leap toward the robot and grab it (and hang on for my life) as the robot is 1/3 hanging off the edge of the trailer. Any closer before we grabbed it and for sure the robot would have fallen off.

We still joke about it by saying, "The robot probabaly would have fallen off, hit the ground with a thud, and kept on driving!" We won the Motorola Quality Award at MMR.


As for this year, I can't really think of any that were particularly unnerving.